[Capr-announce] THE LOST LIBERTY OF CHILDHOOD

[Rodney McFarland]

THE LOST LIBERTY OF CHILDHOOD

by Retta Fontana

17 October 2006

When I was a kid, life was simpler on every level. If you did  
something stupid, you got hurt, and you learned not to do it again,  
or to try a better way. No one that I knew ever fell out of a tree or  
put their eye out. We had a basic survival instinct and some personal  
freedom, which I treasured.

I was not a free kid. I went to Catholic school, church and I washed  
mountains of dishes, and I mean washed them and dried them by hand.  
There was no such thing in our neighborhood as an automatic  
dishwasher. (Well, the youngest kid was automatically the  
dishwasher.) Barring property damage, and within certain parameters,  
my playtime was largely unregulated.

My Dad worked hard, but he didn't really sweat small stuff. He  
couldn't have cared less about the Joneses' cars or furniture. Mostly  
he didn't want to be bothered with "kid stuff" either, but his  
indifference, to me, meant freedom, and freedom is freedom. There's  
nothing else like it. I loved everything about it. It made me feel  
alive. It still does.

There's a deep down excitement mixed with bliss that only comes from  
going after what revs your engine (forgive me, I grew up in the  
shadow of the motor city). Excitement must be a little fear and some  
uncertainty; the challenge of not knowing for sure if you can  
actually do what it is you'd like to try doing, but being free to try  
and free to fail. Life was an internal experience, based on your  
knowledge and skill so far. We were learning all the time, at least  
when we weren't in school.

We took some calculated risks and sometimes we got hurt. When you  
did, you'd go home and into the bathroom to try to stop the bleeding  
yourself. You'd clean up your wound as well as you could with  
Kleenex, water and Band-aids. We didn't die. Any crying out would  
attract the unwanted attention of your Mother and possibly the sound  
of the dreaded words, "it's time to stay in anyway." If you made a  
big fuss about being injured, your Mom would put iodine or  
mercurochrome, or some other horror on your open wound and you'd be  
sorry and stained for days. In summer we played outdoors all day  
long. We made damn sure we didn't hurt ourselves bad enough for Mom  
to have to call Dad at work to take you to the emergency room or you  
were really in trouble then, and that was due to Dad's wrath, not  
your discomfort level. No police or emergency room personnel  
questioned your parents about abuse, ever.

There were no parents dragging children to structured activities run  
by adults. My Mother, like most, didn't even have a car. Luckily for  
us, adults didn't want to be bothered with children's games. Mom was  
busy hanging laundry outdoors. Dad mowed the lawn and painted the  
garage. Luckily, girls were excused from lawn mowing - you might put  
your eye out by a flying stone, mysteriously boomeranging back at you  
from underneath the power mower. It was understood that a man with an  
eye out could still get a woman, but a girl with an eye out, no way.  
She'd be a burden to her parents for life.

We didn't sit around doing nothing. We played kickball in the street.  
If an adult had tried to interfere to make it "fair," they would have  
destroyed the order emerging from chaos. It started with an idea. We  
picked teams ourselves, which were just about perfectly matched,  
making for close games, even though we all played to win.

It wasn't any sense of generosity that made the teams well matched.  
The two best players were captains. Not because they were superior  
beings, but because no one wanted them on the same team. (The word  
for that would have been "slaughter," which wasn't fun, and didn't  
happen too often.) Each side got one pick at a time, and you picked  
the best you could. The youngest and/or worst players got picked  
last, which was only an honest estimation of your value as a player  
in that particular sport, not a personal insult about your worth as a  
human being. If someone got hurt or called home in the middle of a  
game, perfectly suited adjustments were instantly concocted and  
agreed upon by all to continue the game, because it was fun. Sure,  
everyone would have liked an "edge," but if you got one this time,  
it'd go against you the next time, and that wouldn't be fun.

We knew The Rules like breathing in and out and enforced them  
ruthlessly. Sometimes the rules were adjusted, depending on who was  
available to play on any given day. Otherwise, one half of an inning  
could go on for longer than we had time left to play before dark.  
When we needed to fine-tune The Rules, the changes were articulated  
by older kids, but agreed to by everyone because we all knew what was  
fair. Our assent was not voiced, but displayed by resumption of the  
game. There was no use wasting precious game time on pompous  
formalities.

Everyone was a referee. If someone had consistently played dirty,  
they would have been ousted, but no one ever did. Being part of the  
magic of having fun and being free to try your best within agreed  
upon parameters was too important. We regulated ourselves based upon  
a mutual benefit. "The Virtue of Selfishness," as Ayn Rand put it.

Playing it safe

Life was not ideal when I was a kid. It was limited and painful in a  
lot of ways. It had its vice, but it had its virtue. Even though it  
was by default, I had unstructured time and opportunity for  
reflection and self-direction.

Today there are no kids playing kickball in the street. Kickball is  
as outdated now as the game of "kick the can" that my parent's  
generation played. This is only natural; times change. But the  
passing of pick-up games, though unnoticed, is lamentable. They've  
been wiped out by a silent killer, progress, and no one at the CDC is  
looking for a cure.....

Children are now rushed from one activity to the next, with nothing  
other than a vague emptiness signifying that something is missing. So  
often there's just an unexamined sadness in their eyes. After  
spending all day in government day prisons (school), they down  
nutritionally void, happy, dollar meals in the SUV on the way to  
organized activities. They may never know the thrill of working  
freely with others toward a common goal, it's not in their job  
description. They lose trust in their own dreams and organizing  
ability and find the thrill of creating something exciting out of  
nothing an odd, suspicious stranger. They learn to wait for someone  
else to spoon feed them ideas, to make things fair for everyone, to  
make Johnny play nice. No wonder so many teens are promiscuous,  
depressed and violent.

Eichmanns Here, Eichmanns There

When I was a kid, you didn't need a $10 pass to walk your licensed  
dog in the park like we do today--the one which must be noticeably  
displayed within two feet of said dog, on a leash no longer than six  
feet. In case you should try to use the dog ID to walk your other,  
unregulated dog that you didn't pay the $10 for, said pass bears a  
particular dog's description, because everyone knows you'd walk your  
dogs separately to save the $10 a year. And that's ten extra dollars,  
above and beyond the licensing fee, which is dependent upon proof of  
a rabies vaccination, and ten dollars more beyond that for non- 
neutered dogs. For your convenience, the city sends a fellow around  
to snoop in back yards near you to make sure all dogs are pre-approved.

Even with your licensed, vaccinated, neutered and park-passed pet,  
you'd better be out of the park before dusk. The government is  
protecting us all from those dangerous ducks in the pond that are  
apparently transformed into man-eaters (or dog-eaters) after dark.  
(If you're willing to take it up the tailpipe like this, maybe you  
really shouldn't be out after dark.) This isn't Central Park in  
Manhattan , it's a small town of under 12,000 in Michigan .

Yes, our small town has its very own police force. We even have our  
own bicycle patrol officer to prosecute pet rule violators who  
flagrantly walk dogs without passes. It seems there is no limit to  
how well our masters care for us.

Where I grew up, our tiny suburb had its own police force too.  
However, the cops never stopped us for walking down the street like  
they stop my kids now. We live in an affluent neighborhood well  
outside Detroit that has almost no crime, or didn't until this past  
year when the local economy went kaput. It's still what I would  
consider a very low crime area.

At 14, my son, who weighed probably 99 pounds at the time, went  
through a gothic phase-long black hair, big black pants. He had a  
mild case of it--no piercings or tattoos, but still apparently a very  
grave threat to a fearful society. It got him stopped regularly for  
simply walking down a neighborhood street in broad daylight. This is  
a town where you don't want to be caught driving while black, either,  
or you'll get pulled over for possessing a car which "resembles one  
reported stolen." I'm not making this up. It could be called,  
"Stepford."

One time our son made the grave mistake of trying to leave the  
library at 9 p.m. The librarian, a good little Eichmann, said she  
couldn't just let him leave, because minors aren't allowed out on the  
street alone at that time of night. She'd call the local cops, who  
would give him a free ride to the police station, where he could call  
his parents to come and pick him up. She called them, unlocked the  
door to wait out there with him and as soon as she did, he waved at  
her, said "see ya," and disappeared into the night. He never made the  
mistake of staying at the library after 8:50 again. See, children are  
learning all the time!

Why not just completely emasculate our sons? Why not just castrate  
them all at birth? We could eliminate crimes like jaywalking and rape  
in our lifetime before they even get started! It would save all those  
years of effort by low I.Q. schoolteachers to turn little boys into  
little girls, as Fred Reed says. Yes, little girls, all nice and  
conforming-like. Our sons can get a head start on becoming  
metrosexual. Nice is a four-letter word, isn't it? One relied upon by  
polite society, so that the powers that be can keep sticking it to  
average taxpayers to keep them towing the line and coughing up the  
tax revenues. In another culture it might be referred to as "bow,  
bitches!" which isn't at all "nice," but is at least straightforward.

My husband is one of the least confrontational people I know, but a  
number of times he, after hearing that our son had been patted down  
and questioned for walking around in the middle of the day, more than  
once headed for the door to do something about it. With his hand on  
the doorknob, he declared his intention of going down to the police  
station to give them a piece of his mind. After all, we'd lived here  
and paid high property taxes for years. These moments always ended  
with our son's pleas that any confrontation would make him more of a  
target in the future, which was only too true. Those were the only  
magic words that could stop my husband in his tracks. Now we just  
want out of the city life.

Nowadays there's a bureaucracy for everything; unimaginable a  
generation ago. Property taxes keep escalating to cover the benefits  
and pensions of all those additional paper pushers and police.  
Luxuries we, like many Americans, can never hope to achieve for  
ourselves, what with all those taxes breathing down our necks, even  
though the bureaucracies are all here "for our benefit!"

We can't afford any more help

Orange alert has come to small town America , and - surprise - it  
doesn't have brown skin. It's not the African Americans driving down  
from Pontiac , it's not the Mexicans coming up across the Rio  
Grande , it isn't the Muslims fighting back at U.S. invaders. It is  
our own image staring back at us in the mirror. They have found the  
underbelly of our vulnerability, fear of the unknown. Our ability to  
deal with the unknown has been educated, regulated and organized  
right out of us. Now we're "nice," but we're also afraid, and fearful  
people do stupid things, like kowtow to bullies.

The ravenous predator that is government preys upon our collective  
fear. They point fingers at danger, make more laws for us in the name  
of eliminating those dangers, putting us in jeopardy. They take our  
guns to keep us safe, putting us in even graver danger. They ratchet  
up our fears and play off of them like professional criminals. They  
use it to grab more money and power for themselves, even though they  
are truly impotent, ignorant and evil, torture-loving, feral scoundrels.

Governments raise our collective paranoia to dizzying heights by  
broadening danger, eliminating hope that we will ever be free of it,  
guaranteeing the continuation of their reign of terror. If we wait  
for government to somehow make us safe and free, then no, that day  
will never come. The Founding Fathers knew this 200 years ago and so  
placed their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor in harm's  
way. We must do the same, as security is an illusion and freedom is  
completely up to us. There's nothing else like it.